Don't know how it works with anime. Was thinking more around western animation and game stuff with skeletal animation myself.

Then again, raytrace an anime and you'll quite likely get ranked a beginner still, since the cinematics do half the work in animes usually (for most at least, surely there are exceptions). Doesn't actually add anything to the debate for tweens, but it's just a fun fact I figured.

But yeah, skeletal animation and redrawing is fundamentally different, as you mentioned before. Like I said, for skeletal animation it just saves time if you can tween some things without actually changing anything else.

Anyways, I don't think I have much to add to this debate anymore. I'm basically out of points to make, all I can do now is rewrite what I mentioned before. I'll just respond whenever I feel I have something to add or clarify from now on.

I was thinking of something else, so my last message was a bit weird. It is not needed in drawn animations, so it's not a feature I'd classify as a basic animation function, that needs to be learned or ever mentioned.

First thing that pops in my head when thinking of tweens, is pivot's sprite animations of a full body from just 1 side. They all look awful. Also when just tweened, you wont be moving the fabric of the shirt or shadows of the arm or whatnot.

I think that's not what you were debating, maybe... But yeah it saves time. depending from situation it makes the animation worse or just look like it was done normally, but less tedious. I don't know how tedious moving a arm normally is, maybe more clean? I like to keep things always accelerating or decelerating.

Western animation uses tweening? Could you give me a scene of a cartoon that has it?

This umm... How does this has to do with anything? They don't use it for basic movements at all. If you mean like a ball rolling from side to side, they probably want to draw it in a 3 dimensional space, wobbling and turning in 3D instead of making it simple and bad like that.

MCToast wrote:I was thinking of something else, so my last message was a bit weird. It is not needed in drawn animations, so it's not a feature I'd classify as a basic animation function, that needs to be learned or ever mentioned.

First thing that pops in my head when thinking of tweens, is pivot's sprite animations of a full body from just 1 side. They all look awful. Also when just tweened, you wont be moving the fabric of the shirt or shadows of the arm or whatnot.

I think that's not what you were debating, maybe... But yeah it saves time. depending from situation it makes the animation worse or just look like it was done normally, but less tedious. I don't know how tedious moving a arm normally is, maybe more clean? I like to keep things always accelerating or decelerating.

Western animation uses tweening? Could you give me a scene of a cartoon that has it?

Sorry for bumping an old post. Traditional hand drawn animation has always used tweening. The most skilled animators draw the keyframes only, which then get sent to much less skilled inbetweeners. To be honest, I think that Pivot may possible be the first time that animations have been created frame by frame by the same person.

"Once the key animation is approved, the lead animator forwards the scene on to the clean-up department, made up of the clean-up animators and the inbetweeners. The clean-up animators take the lead and assistant animators' drawings and trace them onto a new sheet of paper, taking care in including all of the details present on the original model sheets, so that it appears that one person animated the entire film. The inbetweeners will draw in whatever frames are still missing in between the other animators' drawings. This procedure is called tweening."

MCToast wrote:I was thinking of something else, so my last message was a bit weird. It is not needed in drawn animations, so it's not a feature I'd classify as a basic animation function, that needs to be learned or ever mentioned.

First thing that pops in my head when thinking of tweens, is pivot's sprite animations of a full body from just 1 side. They all look awful. Also when just tweened, you wont be moving the fabric of the shirt or shadows of the arm or whatnot.

I think that's not what you were debating, maybe... But yeah it saves time. depending from situation it makes the animation worse or just look like it was done normally, but less tedious. I don't know how tedious moving a arm normally is, maybe more clean? I like to keep things always accelerating or decelerating.

Western animation uses tweening? Could you give me a scene of a cartoon that has it?

Sorry for bumping an old post. Traditional hand drawn animation has always used tweening. The most skilled animators draw the keyframes only, which then get sent to much less skilled inbetweeners. To be honest, I think that Pivot may possible be the first time that animations have been created frame by frame by the same person.

"Once the key animation is approved, the lead animator forwards the scene on to the clean-up department, made up of the clean-up animators and the inbetweeners. The clean-up animators take the lead and assistant animators' drawings and trace them onto a new sheet of paper, taking care in including all of the details present on the original model sheets, so that it appears that one person animated the entire film. The inbetweeners will draw in whatever frames are still missing in between the other animators' drawings. This procedure is called tweening."

This is true, but I think that MCToast was referring more to automatic tweening rather than the manual tweeting you're referencing. Although contrary to MCToast's post, automatic tweening is used in western animation constantly.

For convenience sake, throughout the rest of my post, if I say "Tweening", I'm referring to one-click automated tweening that is performed by a program.

To address MCToast's question where western animation uses tweening, there are actually a lot of skeletal based cartoons out lately that rely on tweening almost constantly (and it doesn't look half bad either). All background pans are tweens. Something like a ball rolling is usually a tween. The movement of someone jumping up and down is occasionally an eased tween. Tweens are used everywhere in professional animation. I'm not going to go looking for specific examples to prove my point; you can watch nearly any modern cartoon and see examples of what I've just said.

If I were to guess why most people are opposed to this change, I would say it is they are scared that their time spent doing it the "hard way" will all go for nothing now that people can do it in a few seconds. Making multi-stk background pans with foreground and background objects moving at different speeds will no longer be something that is a huge achievement, but rather something accomplished through a few clicks.

And why exactly is that a bad thing? Are background pans hard? No. They're tedious. They don't require skill. Making a mental note to always remember to move this object 3 pixels to the right is not skill, it's purely tedious. What's wrong with adding a feature that streamlines this process? That sounds amazing to me! I remember in my DDC10 animation I spent hours and hours moving the background objects pixel by pixel. If I had a tweening tool, I could have simply assigned them to move automatically, and instead could focus my efforts on making the main character's movements better than they were.

Good animators will know when to use tweens and when not to. Tweens are not going to make anyone worse than they are unless they lack the knowledge of when to use them and when not to. And this is why tweening is not only a great addition to pivot as an animation tool, but also a great addition to pivot as a learning tool. Now, beginner animators can learn in a simple environment what tweens are, what they do, how to use them, when to use them, and the pros and cons of using a tween versus animating by hand. These are things that every animator needs to know, and what better way to get beginners to learn than by adding the feature into an entry level program like this?

And why exactly is there this attitude that flash is the devil and pivot and flash should not share the same features? Flash is a great tool for animation! It gives people a huge set of useful tools to animate with.

One of the few problems flash has is that it is bloated/complicated; flash has a lot of features that are not needed for someone who is only interested in animation, and those features can make the process very cumbersome.

If pivot turned into a stripped down flash, with only the most essential animation features, I think it would be absolutely brilliant, and I cannot see the argument of anyone who thinks otherwise. Having a simple, entry level animation program that teaches about tweening and similar features would be so great for beginner animators, and IMO it's something that doesn't exist outside of pivot or maybe easytoon (easytoon is probably too simplified).

If this feature is executed in an easy-to-understand way, it could be a huge step forward for the program, and it disappointing me a lot that some people might be too tied to the past to see it.

I personally think Tweens are a fantastic idea. At least for backgrounds and camera movements (Clouds are such a pain to move by hand each frame) Half the reason I moved to Flash was due to frustration over having to move so many things so many times. Plus, it's optional. I don't see how anyone would be against it.

ipwnall wrote:And why exactly is that a bad thing? Are background pans hard? No. They're tedious. They don't require skill. Making a mental note to always remember to move this object 3 pixels to the right is not skill, it's purely tedious. What's wrong with adding a feature that streamlines this process? That sounds amazing to me! I remember in my DDC10 animation I spent hours and hours moving the background objects pixel by pixel. If I had a tweening tool, I could have simply assigned them to move automatically, and instead could focus my efforts on making the main character's movements better than they were.

See this is the part of tweening that actually makes me a lot more enthusiastic about it then I was before, and I like the way you worded this too, It was something that got brought up in the second podcast where by there is a difference between something that is actually hard and something that is just unnecessarily tedious.

It's potential application to movements is still something I don't know where I stand on, but it should be alright. I don't think Peter is gonna take out things that characteristically make Pivot, Pivot. So tldr a lot of my bitching on the previous pages was a lot to do with sentimental value.